You were a good man today….but tomorrow is another day.

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I woke up thinking negatively about my job. Thought about it all the way into work today. Then I got to a point in my commute where a bunch of firemen were collecting money for kids suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I thought, is god giving me a sign to stop worrying about my job. These children have a tough life and I am worrying about my inconsequential problems. I took it as a sign and my day went pretty smoothly. There were of course times that all I could think about were what I was going to do when I lost my job.

But on balance it went really well. And then the CEO showed up. And you know what happened, NOTHING. It was like a normal day to everyone else. What a moron I am. So I go on with my life and my job. I am sure tomorrow something else will make me crazy.

I have come to a point in my life where I see the worst possible outcome in most events. I start a project at home and foresee failure. I go for a workout and expect a heart attack with the smallest chest pain. I have a pain in my arm and I think heart problems. I go to by something and automatically think I am being taken advantage of. I plan an event with the family and think something will go wrong. It is the worst at work. I see a closed door meeting and think it is my bosses talking about me, about a failed project. A client doesn’t speak to me at a large meeting I think what did I do wrong. In actuality none of these things have anything to do with me. I have no problems, but my mind is out of control.

Tomorrow the CEO and HR director will be coming to our office and my immediate thought is that I am going to be laid off.

Up at 3:16. Tossing and turning for an hour thinking about all I need to do. Work is crazy these days. I am up to my eyeballs in tasks. But as we say in engineering, “It is good to be busy.” Ha. A colleague of mine says that statement is like a slave saying to another, “At least we are alive.”

I am working on 7 projects with more in the pipeline and no end in site. I have 2 projects that I acquired from a former employee of the company. I was assigned them when they went to bid. So while I was learning about the project, I had to answer contractor questions about the project. Finding problems has required significant design on one of the projects. The worst part is that the project budget is nearly expended and the work is done on my own time.

Today I will be touching in some way all 5 of the projects. Then I have rehab for my bad back. I need to remember to call the doctor to schedule a visit to look at my sinus problems, then off to Freshman Orientation for my youngest son.

After all that I will be taking the dog for a walk to relieve some of the adrenaline I have coursing through my veins and try to work through some of the project issues I have. Hopefully this will let me sleep later than 3 am.

I own a dog and can’t imagine our house without him there. I can’t imagine why we didn’t get a dog sooner. But God works in mysterious ways.

Our dog is a black lab and one of the best dogs around. He is a mix of some sort but we are not sure a mix of what. He was adopted after being turned into the SPCA because he was too much work for his owner. We have really ben blessed. But I am not a dog lover in the normal sense. I don’t treat him like one of my kids. But he acts like one sometimes. It is great that when I come home from anywhere he acts like I have been gone a year. That tail is wagging so hard his whole body is moving. It was like when my kids were toddlers. They acted the same way.

My father and my sister have severe anxiety issues. For a long time my sister has had panic attacks and I think she is on medicine to help deal with it. My father, for as long as I can remember, has gotten severe anxiety from going to the doctor. As he has aged it has gotten worse and spread to other aspects of his life.

I thought I had avoided the anxiety gene but it has hit me with a vengeance. I could usually just roll with things. As I tell my kids “Like water off a ducks back.” But over the past 2 years I can’t.

My sense is that it all started at a job I was at about 4 years ago. The boss was a micromanager. I did my best, but most times it was not the way he would have done it, so it was wrong. I began to question myself. It made me a better worker, but I started to over think everything. I would dwell on the most inconsequential things. And thus started my stomach problems. Because I would dwell on things and I ate really badly, my stomach would act up. And by act up I mean shooting pain through my chest. I ignored it as much as possible, but as time when on it began to happen more frequently. I began to get nervous.

Then it happened again and the feeling was worse than before. I got really nervous, my heart rate went up because of that. At the time I didn’t know that it was anxiety that made my heart rate go up. I got even more nervous. I went outside and walked around and nothing changed. No more pain in the chest but I was really nervous. So I went to the emergency room thinking I had had or was having a heart attack. I went through all the tests and stayed overnight for observation. The doctor in the ER said you didn’t have a heart attack but we are going to keep you overnight to do some tests. I said to her that I never had one before and was nervous. She said, better to be safe than sorry. So I went through a bunch of tests, and after the full stress test (they put the dye in you veins, and you have two MRI’s) the doctor says to me, “You could run a marathon.” He then told me it was probably just stomach problems. I didn’t think anything of it and didn’t connect it to my other pains. I forgot about it after that.

I went on to run two half marathons. I mentally fine. The running relaxed me. It was just awesome.

Shortly after the ER visit I was laid off from the job for lack of work. It is quite common in my industry, but still stressful because it was right around the holidays and I knew there would be no quick turnaround to a new job because it was the holidays. I must say that it was both a blessing and a curse to get laid off from that job. A blessing that I became a better worker and got away from the micromanager, but a curse in that I began to question everything that I did. I would dwell on things and over think them. I was unsure of myself. I was unsure if I would get a new job.

I moved on to the next job a few months later. It was serendipity that I found this new job. I was at one of my son’s sporting events talking to one of the other dads and he asks me how my job is going (we were in the same field and knew many of the same people), and I mentioned that I was laid off a few months earlier and still looking for a job. Wouldn’t you know that he had an opening at his firm and based on my experience, I would be a perfect fit. A week later I had started my new job and had a fresh start.